ABSTRACT
Dick Ruopp and Meghan Pfister provide two frames of reference for understanding LabNet, one conceptual and one chronological. They first outline the aspirations and intellectual underpinnings of the effort, embodied in its three defining themes: the use of student projects to bring the excitement, motivation, and discipline of real scientific inquiry into the classroom; the vital role that a community of practice plays in supporting teachers and fostering educational change; and the potential of modern technology to support experimentation and exploration among students, as well as communication among teachers. The authors then show how these themes played out in the life of LabNet, tracing the history of its many activities from its inception in 1989 to the process of evaluation and reflection that led to the writing of this book. The chapter closes with a glossary of terms used throughout the book that may be unfamiliar to the reader.
